Our Team
Alex Gill
Founder & CEO
Alex is a social entrepreneur who founded Mendicant Group in 2005 after working as an exec at a number of nonprofits and charities. A graduate of Stanford University’s Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders, Alex co-founded Toronto Metropolitan University’s social enterprise incubator, the Social Ventures Zone and regularly speaks around the world on social change, entrepreneurship, and community development. Alex is author of AIM: Achieve, Inspire and Make a Difference (Wiley, 2010) and was named by THIS Magazine as one of Canada’s Social Justice All-Stars in 2015.
Check out Alex’s TED talk “What’s stopping us from making social problems obsolete?
Cathy Vine
MSW, RSW (Senior Consultant and Project Manager)
Cathy engages in research, writing and action projects by collaborating with diverse groups — young people, parents, researchers, practitioners, advocates, and Indigenous community members and leaders — to advance their goals.
Work highlights include turning research into action at Voices for Children, supporting youth in care to run the Youth Leaving Care Hearings, and working with urban Indigenous communities.
Cathy has co-written and co-edited several books and reports including, Cruel but not Unusual: Violence in Families in Canada (3rd edition, 2022).
Tyrenny Anderson
(Senior Consultant)
Tyrenny is Mendicant’s expert in strategy, governance, change management and customer centricity. As a professional coach and business advisor, Tyrenny designs and facilitates workshops on improving soft skills and applying methodologies, including Human-Centred Design and Design Thinking, to spur progress and turn strategy into action.
She also teaches innovation skills courses for the Masters of Managing Innovation at UTM, is an Entrepreneur Coach for Ryerson University’s Social Venture Zone, and is a Vice-Chair on the McGill Women, Leadership & Philanthropy board.
She holds a BA from McGill University and an MBA from the Rotman School of Management, with a focus on strategy and entrepreneurship.
Anna Hoferica
MBA (Financial and Program Analyst)
Anna is a certified auditor and risk analysis assessor with extensive experience working in Ontario’s public sector and for a variety of nonprofit organizations.
She served in a series of consulting, risk analysis and senior audit roles across the Ontario Public Service, most recently for the Ontario Ministry of Finance, before moving on to work for the Canadian Red Cross and a variety of other nonprofit organizations.
Leona Banfield
(Associate Consultant)
Leona is a former senior autism services manager who now helps health and social services organizations across Ontario address their people, service and growth issues.
She brings to the Mendicant team a practical understanding of organizational context that comes from spending more than 20 years in a range of social services agencies.
Leona has a Master’s Degree in Applied Behavioural Studies from Brock University.
Josh Harrower
MBA (Data Analyst and Researcher)
Josh believes that social change begins with empathy but is carried forward with good data.
A graduate of Ryerson’s University’s Ted Rogers School of Management, he has brought his research and analytical skills to a number of Mendicant’s social enterprise and community impact projects.
George Goodwin
(Consultant)
George has more than 40 years of experience working in the space between the business and nonprofit worlds.
He served as a special advisor to the executive team at George Weston Ltd, assisting in the creation of one of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards, the $60,000 Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction, as well as helping establish the Canadian arm of Prince’s Charities Canada (later Prince’s Trust Canada).
He has served on the boards of several charities, including as Board Chair of The Nathaniel Dett Chorale and Director of The Al Purdy A-frame Association.
He holds an MBA from McGill University.